CME’s Favourite Holiday Cookies
These tempting and tasty butter cookies are quickly shaped as classic thumbprints, filled with your favourite fancy jam. Or use the same delicious dough to make a festive assortment – try our easy variations and let you imagination be merry!
Ingredients
- ¾ cup butter
- 1¼ cup sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 tsp almond extract
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1-2 tsp grated lemon or orange rind (organic, if possible)
- 1 cup finely ground almonds
- 2-2½ cups unbleached flour
Cream butter and sugar until smooth. Add egg, salt, flavourings and grated peel. Stir in the ground nuts and flour; mix well to create a pliable dough.
For Bird Nests:
- Shape ¾” balls of dough and (to make them crispy-shiny) dip the cookie top in granulated sugar.
- Place the dough balls sugar-side-up on the lined (or buttered) baking tray.
- With your fingertip or a small tool press a deep hole in the centre-top of each cookie and fill with jam
- Fit the shaped cookies on parchment-lined (or buttered) baking trays about 2” apart.
- BAKE at 350F for about 12-15 minutes, until the edges are golden and the jam is melty.
Variations:
- Instead of jam, fill the dough-ball nests with marzipan or chocolate, or simply push a blanched almond into the top of each cookie ahead of baking. (Skins slip off almonds after 1 minute in a in boiling water bath).
- Bake small dough balls and while still warm, roll them in icing sugar. Brush the little dough balls with egg (or flax egg*) and roll in chopped nuts or coconut ahead of baking.
- This dough can also be rolled 1/8 inch thick on a floured surface, then cut-out fancy shapes or circles, and decorate, as you wish:
Before baking, you can brush lightly with beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar, plain or coloured.
After baking, spread “icing” (just mix lemon juice and powdered sugar) on the still-warm cookies
Paste 2 small round cookies together with raspberry jam and then roll in granulated sugar, Yum!
For chocolate lovers, edge cookies with chocolate: In a small jar placed carefully in very hot water, melt & stir
½ cup chocolate chips + 1 tsp butter + 1 tsp cream – dip and spread.
*Flax egg: 1 Tbsp ground flax mixed with 3 Tbsp water = 1 egg replacement